Tag Archives: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Barack Obama recently submitted to mounting pressure to join his subjects on the healthcare exchange by signing up for a “bronze” plan. Of course, the Obamas will never have to worry about their own health coverage as he remains covered by the military; but the announcement of his enrollment was supposed to indicate solidarity with the commoners forced to accept this incredibly unpopular law.

A White House statement cited the “complicated nature of the president’s case” in explaining why an “in-person sign-up” was required.

Furthermore, official sources confirm Obama’s personal information is not included in the database used by the healthcare exchange in determining a user’s identity. While the White House claims the omission is due to security concerns, many skeptics wonder if Obama is unable to provide such documentation because none exists.

The announcement of his difficult enrollment ignited further debate regarding his eligibility to be president. Just two weeks after the Hawaiian health official who authenticated Obama’s birth certificate was killed in a suspicious plane crash, this anomaly adds more fuel to the already heated dispute.

Though it is true Obama requires greater security than the average citizen, he is far from the only American whose personal data is especially sensitive. There are no in-person sign-ups for these individuals, though, as their identifying information is apparently comingling with everyone else’s in the exchange database.

Even taken at face value, the White House’s justification illustrates the glaring potential for security breaches within the exchanges. Despite those lurking dangers, the only person whose data is omitted from the program is the very man who subjected the rest of the country to the disastrous boondoggle.

In addition to the eligibility fracas, Obama’s enrollment showcased his deep disconnect from ordinary Americans. While millions receive cancellation notices from their preferred insurer and are forced to navigate a complicated and ineffective bureaucratic maze in order to find a replacement plan, Obama received personal guidance as he vacationed in Hawaii.

Still, the process was so convoluted his enrollment was not publicized until days after it happened.

With seemingly endless extensions and waivers related to the law, it is painfully apparent ObamaCare proponents sold America a bill of goods. Each time Obama tries to rectify the situation – such as his enrollment during yet another taxpayer-funded vacation – he exposes yet another layer of embarrassment.

Two months ago, the DC Federal Appeals Court ruled that ObamaCare’s mandate to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives could not be imposed on the business organizations Freshway Foods and Freshway Logistics of Sidney, Ohio. The Court ruled that “…forcing those owners to provide the coverage would violate their individual First Amendment rights allowing for the protection of their religion.”

Prior to the December 16th ruling, administration attorneys argued that because Congress refused to institute a contraception mandate which satisfied White House demands, Obama was somehow “…authorized to enforce his contraception mandate in the manner he did.” In short, Barack should be allowed to ignore both the law and constitutional limits on Executive power if Congress doesn’t satisfactorily submit to his wishes.

But Judge Cogan didn’t buy it. “It would set a dangerous precedent to hold that if the Executive Branch cannot act unilaterally, then there is no alternative solution,” said the judge.

In addition to its defeat in Judge Cogan’s court, ObamaCare suffered yet another blow just this weekend when a federal judge in Oklahoma City “…granted an injunction…that prevents the government from enforcing the ObamaCare mandate requiring religious groups across the country to provide insurance that includes access to the morning-after pill and other contraceptives.” The injunction prevents the government assessing massive financial penalties against the nearly 200 plaintiffs in the class action suit.

Three for-profit appeals cases are currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court and the government appealed the Oklahoma City court’s decision to the Supreme Court immediately after the Friday decision. The American public will soon learn if the “separation of church and state” argument so freely and fraudulently applied to the Constitution will secure the right of religious conviction just as it has so often served to crush it.

Two months ago, the DC Federal Appeals Court ruled that ObamaCare’s mandate to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives could not be imposed on the business organizations Freshway Foods and Freshway Logistics of Sidney, Ohio. The Court ruled that “…forcing those owners to provide the coverage would violate their individual First Amendment rights allowing for the protection of their religion.”

Then, on December 16th, Judge Brian Cogan made his U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York “…the first court to hold that participating in Obama’s scheme to provide free birth control is a substantial burden on the free practice of religion…” Not only did Cogan strike down Obamacare’s contraception mandate as applied to religious non-profit organizations, he also “…sent a strong signal that federal courts were losing patience with President Obama’s many stitches of executive power.”
Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/court-warns-obama-that-he-is-abusing-power/#uGAmpmb8qodtTY2T.99

For purely partisan reasons, the Obama administration cynically unveiled extra-legal plans on the eve of Thanksgiving to unilaterally delay the launch of a website for small businesses to select plans through federal health care insurance exchanges.It’s just the latest sleazy political move by the Community-Organizer-in-Chief to salvage his party’s fading electoral prospects by delaying at least some of the approaching tens of millions of health insurance policy cancellations until after the national vote next November.

It is also a sign of the Obama White House’s growing desperation over the political ramifications surrounding the grotesque failings of Obamacare. The administration said Wednesday it will unilaterally delay the upcoming launch of the online portal for small businesses. The website, which would allow small businesses to window-shop plans through the federal health insurance exchanges, won’t be ready for another year.

President Obama, whose political stature seems to shrink almost hourly, is feverishly trying to keep congressional Democrats aboard his sinking political ship. On Capitol Hill, Democratic lawmakers are now openly panicking at the damage the growing public backlash over Obamacare is going to inflict on their standings in the next Congress. Recent developments suggest that an electoral tsunami is developing that threatens to drown Democrats and give Republicans a healthy majority in the Senate.

The new one-year small business signup delay is just the latest in a series of unilaterally imposed deadline changes. One allows consumers to enroll until Dec. 23 — instead of Dec. 15 — to get coverage in time for the new year. The president also announced plans to push back the beginning of individual enrollment next year from Oct. 15 to Nov. 15, or after the 2014 midterm congressional elections. Obama has no legal authority to do this but he doesn’t care.

As Obama, a one-time part-time constitutional law lecturer ought to know, obstructing the implementation of a duly enacted federal law by refusing to enforce it in order to secure partisan political advantage almost certainly rises to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” as the Framers of the Constitution recognized when they wrote the presidential impeachment provision in Article 2, Section 4 of the Constitution. Of course, hardly a day goes by in Obama’s increasingly imperial presidency without the Chief Executive creating new grounds for his own impeachment, and so this latest outrage is, unfortunately, barely newsworthy.

The Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) that is being delayed was supposed to help small businesses by providing tax credits that could be used to defray the cost of premiums, according to the Washington Times.

“In the case of SHOP, the administration said that online tool won’t be ready until November 2014. Department of Health and Human Services officials said they are still allowing enrollment through agents, brokers and insurers in the federal marketplace.

Businesses with fewer than 50 employees, which are not required to offer coverage under the Affordable Care Act, can compare plans online starting Dec. 1, even if they have to rely on non-Internet applications to qualify for tax credits and gain coverage for employees, officials said.”

Republicans say this is the latest indication that Obamacare should be repealed outright.

“The president bit off more than he can chew with this health care law, and small businesses are now forced to bear the consequences,” said Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio).

House Small Business Committee chairman Sam Graves (R-Mo.) said that “another last-minute delay is just more proof that the law is unworkable and beyond the capabilities of the administration.” He added, “if small firms failed to provide services this frequently, they would be fired.”

Although Obamacare critics may be enjoying some well-deserved schadenfreude at the expense of the Obama administration as the bureaucratically bungled HealthCare.gov enrollment website launched Oct. 1 continues to malfunction, the president’s law is still helping to wreak havoc among health care consumers and cause upheaval in the health care industry, just as it was designed to do. No websites have to be functioning properly in order for Obamacare to collapse the system.

Government officials are still trying to fix the federal website, which is used in the 36 states that chose not to create their own health insurance exchanges. They say the website should be working for the “vast majority” of users in the individual market this weekend, but they’re probably guilty of wishful thinking at best, or of lying, at worst.

Health insurers have already dropped –or in Obama-speak, “transitioned”– at least five million Americans from their health plans despite President Obama’s oft-repeated promise that under Obamacare all Americans would be allowed to keep their current policies. And tens of millions more –perhaps more than 1 in 2 of all persons insured through their employers– will be pushed over the cliff next year as various provisions of the Affordable Care Act come into force.

Calculating left-wingers counted on being able to blame the insurance companies for the wave of policy cancellations, but so far the public isn’t buying it. Americans know President Obama lied over and over again about how Obamacare would work and his already-abysmal public approval ratings continue to fall. Too many people are experiencing real hardship as the Affordable Care Act causes their insurance to be canceled — and they know who to blame for their pain and suffering.

Stung by public anger and his rapidly plunging approval ratings, President Obama cried crocodile tears earlier this month as he tendered his now-infamous non-apology apology for lying about Americans being able to keep their plans.

Around that time he also proposed delaying the cancellation of existing health care insurance policies for one year. The House of Representatives responded quickly, approving Congressman Fred Upton’s (R-Mich.) quixotic legislation that would supposedly allow Americans to keep their insurance plans. No one knows how the statute would actually work in the real world.

The legal infrastructure of the health care insurance market has been changed. Policies were canceled because they don’t subsidize all the new services that Obamacare mandates. Those policies no longer exist for a reason. Insurers can’t just push a button and bring them back into existence.

Obama’s bizarre pronouncements reflect leftists’ disdain and ignorance of market processes, and the president’s determination to proceed in defiance of those processes. A locomotive going 60 miles per hour can’t stop instantly when brakes are activated. Nor can the Obamacare juggernaut which has so many moving parts spread out over such a wide area that locking up one part of the beast won’t stop it from continuing to barrel forward.

But Obama wants to have a Communist Chinese-style rubber-stamp Congress for the final two years of his presidency.

As Obama sees it, in order to accomplish this almost unprecedented feat he has to distance himself from the most visible damage that is being inflicted on society by his signature legislative achievement. He has to pretend to try to mitigate the damage done by Obamacare.

Obama will do whatever he feels he has to do, including lying and demonizing Republicans, in order to gain total control over Congress.

As frustrating as Health Care.gov may be sometimes,” Obama told Obama Care navigators and volunteers. “We’re on the right side of history.”

It wasn’t the first time that Obama had invoked the right side of history to rally the troops. During the Arab Spring, as Mubarak resigned on his orders, he said, “History will end up recording that at every juncture in the situation in Egypt, that we were on the right side of history.”

It’s hard to be on the right side of history at every juncture. But Obama believed that he had achieved the feat by backing Mubarak, then backing his overthrow and then backing the Muslim Brotherhood.

Two years later, history recorded that Obama was on the wrong side of history with the fiction of the Arab Spring being swept away by the impersonal forces of history which despite liberal claims to the contrary do not care who was claiming to be on their good side last week.

After lying to Americans and telling them that his intervention in Libya was about protecting Benghazi from a massacre that was never going to happen, he told the Democratic National Committee; “We’re on the right side of history now throughout the Middle East, because we believe in preventing innocents from getting slaughtered, and we believe in human rights for all people.”

The Libyan rebels began targeting Africans and Christians, then they attacked the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, and today the country is run by warring militias; including Al Qaeda groups which recruit fighters and obtain weapons for their campaigns in Mali and Syria.

In the summer of this year, Obama told Democratic members of Congress who were concerned that the Obama Care rollout was going to be a mess, that there was no reason to worry. “We are on the right side of these issues and the right side of history in terms of providing health care to Americans.”

Now the right side of history is starting to look like the left side of history.

At least one of the Democrats, Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter, decided that she had been on the wrong side of history and voted for the “You Can Keep Your Plan” Act.

The right side of history is where the left wants to be, but it’s a famously elusive place.

Hillary Clinton warned Russia and China that they had to stand on the right side of history against Assad. Since then Obama has moved closer to the Russian side of history than the Russians have to his side.

Afterward, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wrote an editorial titled “On the Right Side of History”; sardonically mentioning that his regime’s solution was the way to stay “as it has become fashionable to say, ‘on the right side of history.’”

After her resignation, Hillary Clinton took credit for the Arab Spring telling The Economist, “I do think we are on the right side of history” and insisted that “focusing on how to assist these new governments… that are heavily dominated by Islamist parties, is very much in America’s interests.”

Fast forward through a little history and the Tunisian Islamists she was discussing are on the ropes and on the wrong side of history.

In 2008, Bill Clinton told the Democratic National Convention, “The Republicans said I was too young and too inexperienced to be commander in chief. Sound familiar? It didn’t work in 1992 because we were on the right side of history. And it will not work in 2008 because Barack Obama is on the right side of history.”

Clinton was inexperienced. His failure to cope with Al Qaeda led to September 11 and his failure to force Saddam Hussein to comply with his agreements led to the Iraq War. Clinton left behind a mess for Bush to clean up. If he was on the right side of history, the world he left behind would have been a lot neater.

Now his wife is preparing to launch a presidential campaign by arguing that her husband was a liar, that Obama was inexperienced and that she can do better.

During the presidential debate, Mitt Romney challenged Obama, warning that “We’re four years closer to a nuclear Iran.”

Obama arrogantly retorted, “They can look at my track record, whether it’s Iran sanctions, whether it’s dealing with counterterrorism… and they can say that the president of the United States… has stood on the right side of history.”

On this side of history, Obama ‘s track record is that he trashed Iranian sanctions and attempted to give their nuclear program a blank check. Al Qaeda is romping around the world while he scrambles to appease the Taliban. If that’s his idea of the right side of history, then it also happens to be the side of history favored by Iran and Al Qaeda.

Obama wasn’t the first man of the left to believe that he was on the right side of history.

Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev had told Western diplomats, “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!”

Eight years later, he had been removed from power and was being written out of Soviet history by his own comrades. His only recourse was to smuggle his memoirs to the only place that would print his version of history… the United States.

Khrushchev had told Nixon that his grandchildren would live in a Communist America. Nixon had replied that the Soviet leader’s grandchildren would live in a capitalist Russia. Both men proved to be right and wrong at the same time. Christopher Cox Nixon lives in Bill de Blasio’s New York while Khrushchev’s son applied for permanent residency in the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union.

History is famously elastic and only progressives believe that it has a right side and a wrong side. There is no such thing as the right side of history; just as there is no such a thing as the right side of age. History, like age, is mortality. The only truly inevitable outcome of history is death.

History does not have sides; only outcomes.

Everything wrong with Obama’s attitude can be gleaned from his quote. “If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.”

It’s the sort of quote that sounds inspirational if you don’t think too much about the implications of a world leader who already claims to know what the right path is and believes in determinedly moving down it, without regard to consequences, because he is certain that if he persists, progress will come.

Obama believes that the left side of history is the right side of history and has a radical faith that whatever goes wrong will eventually be set right again by the inevitable progressive force of history.

He believes that ObamaCare will work because socialized medicine is on the right side of history and the free market is on the wrong side of history. It is this faith in a radical muse of history that will fix websites, soothe terrorists and calm the angry peasants that moves him from one disaster to another.

Stung by public anger and his rapidly plunging approval ratings, President Obama wants to delay the cancellation of existing health care insurance policies for one year.

It has nothing to do with the public interest. It has everything to do with crass political calculations.

As an electoral tsunami gradually develops that threatens to drown Democrats and give Republicans a healthy majority in the Senate, Democrats remain focused. They are clinging to the increasingly unlikely prospect of recapturing the House of Representatives in next year’s elections, a move that would allow them to ram through more America-killing legislation. This, of course, assumes the Democrats keep control of the Senate, something that at the moment seems quite impossible.

President Obama yesterday played out a tableau that could easily have come from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Obama preyed on the most gullible Americans, the lowest of low-information voters, putting on a show for their benefit.

Obama might have gotten away with such a dimwit-friendly tack but for the fact that everyone in the country knows Obama lied about Obamacare allowing Americans to keep their health plans and their medical doctors. In addition, too many people are experiencing real hardship as the Affordable Care Act causes their insurance to be canceled — and they know who to blame for their pain and suffering.

In the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, the president and press corps may as well have been surrounded by unicorns, leprechauns, and satyrs as Obama threw pixie dust in the air and waved his magic wand after mispronouncing incantations in Austrian.

Obama exposed the residents of all 57 states of the nation to his lies yet again, promising that even now Americans would be able to keep their health insurance plans if they liked them.

“I completely get how upsetting this can be for a lot of Americans, particularly after assurances they heard from me that if they had a plan that they liked, they could keep it,” Obama said in his by-now tiresome fake sympathy routine.

“And to those Americans, I hear you loud and clear. I said that I would do everything we can to fix this problem. And today I’m offering an idea that will help do it.”

Obama explained that a grandfather clause in the Affordable Care Act already allows people whose insurance plans don’t change to keep their plans. He didn’t bother to explain that that consumer protection measure is more or less moot because insurance plans change constantly.

“Today, we’re going to extend that principle both to people whose plans have changed since the law took effect, and to people who bought plans since the law took effect,” Obama said.

Except that His Imperial Majesty is doing no such thing. While taking credit on live television for appearing to do something about the cancelation crisis caused by the Obamacare law, Obama passed the buck to insurers and state regulators.

The president said state insurance commissioners retain authority to decide which plans can be sold in their states and insurance companies “can extend current plans that would otherwise be canceled into 2014, and Americans whose plans have been canceled can choose to re-enroll in the same kind of plan.”

Except that they can’t. The Obamacare statute says they can’t and the economics of the situation won’t allow it. The legal infrastructure of the health care insurance market has been changed. Policies were canceled because they don’t subsidize all the new services that Obamacare mandates. Those policies no longer exist for a reason. Insurers can’t just push a button and bring them back into existence.

Obama’s bizarre pronouncement reflects leftists’ disdain and ignorance of market processes, and the president’s determination to proceed in defiance of those processes. A locomotive going 60 miles per hour can’t stop instantly when brakes are activated. Similarly, the Obamacare juggernaut has so many moving parts spread out over such a wide area that locking up one part of the beast won’t stop it from continuing to barrel forward.

Continuing his lunchtime stroll through La-La Land, Obama said,

“We’re also requiring insurers to extend current plans to inform their customers about two things. One, that protections — what protections these renewed plans don’t include. And number two, that the marketplace offers new options with better coverage and tax credits that might help you bring down the cost.”

It’s pure fantasy, of course, but lying, stalling, misdirecting, and stonewalling have served the Obama administration well over its first five years. Besides, extravagant healthcare subsidies begin to kick in next year, and all that free money floating around is bound to calm at least some irate consumers.

When consumers find out they’ve been hoodwinked, the Left is counting on them to blame the corporate world. Obama and desperate Democratic lawmakers are already blaming insurance companies for en masse cancelations, and saying insurers should let consumers keep their plans, seemingly oblivious to the fact that all this upheaval was caused by the Obamacare law.

Obama’s fanciful fix requires cooperation from insurance companies and state regulators, and so far he’s not getting it from either.

“This doesn’t change anything other than force insurers to be the political flack jackets for the administration,” said one insurance industry source. “So now when we don’t offer these policies the White House can say it’s the insurers doing this and not being flexible.”

“The only reason consumers are getting notices about their current coverage changing is because the ACA requires all policies to cover a broad range of benefits that go beyond what many people choose to purchase today,” said Karen Ignagni, CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).

“Changing the rules after health plans have already met the requirements of the law could destabilize the market and result in higher premiums for consumers. Premiums have already been set for next year based on an assumption of when consumers will be transitioning to the new marketplace. If now fewer younger and healthier people choose to purchase coverage in the exchange, premiums will increase and there will be fewer choices for consumers. Additional steps must be taken to stabilize the marketplace and mitigate the adverse impact on consumers.”

State insurance regulators also threw cold water on the crazy proposal.

Washington State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler, a Democrat, said allowing state residents to keep their non-ACA-compliant policies would wreck his state’s health insurance exchange so the state won’t permit it. District of Columbia Insurance Commissioner William P. White, who was appointed by the city’s Democratic mayor Vincent Gray, said the proposal “undercuts the purpose of the exchanges, including the District’s D.C. Health Link, by creating exceptions that make it more difficult for them to operate.”

All of this chaos created by Obamacare and President Obama’s admission that his system isn’t working, vindicates the aggressive approach taken by conservatives who pushed hard to defund Obamacare before the partial shutdown of the federal government last month.

The Senate Conservatives Fund, which has been at the forefront of the fight, loosed a mass email after Obama’s speech yesterday, boasting that, “Ted Cruz was right. Republicans should have refused to fund Obamacare.”

According to the SCF,

“The president’s health care law is an unmitigated disaster and now Democrats in Washington are running for political cover. If Republicans had listened to Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), they could have won this fight and stopped Obamacare. Instead, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sabotaged the effort and now Americans are paying the price.”

The SCF points out that Congress will have another opportunity to defund Obamacare two months from now. “Obamacare funding expires January 15 and Republicans should not renew it,” the political committee says in the email. “If Democrats cause another government shutdown to protect this terrible law, Republicans should hold firm and use the showdown to push for full repeal.”

Although the House is expected today to take up Congressman Fred Upton’s (R-Mich.) largely symbolic legislation that would supposedly allow Americans to keep their insurance plans, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) urged repeal. “There is no way to fix this,” he said following Obama’s presser.

Even Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is now calling for the repeal of Obamacare. Just weeks ago McCain labeled those fighting Obamacare as “wacko birds.”

It should be noted that Obama’s midday press conference yesterday, which started more than a half hour late, came the day after the the administration’s latest lies about enrollment numbers were made public.

Leftist Greg Sargent of the Washington Post, ever the patient Obamacare cheerleader, eagerly conveyed the administration’s lies, claiming “[a]round 106,000 enrolled in new plans during October.” He linked to a grossly misleading flow chart at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that tries to justify the make-believe enrollment figure.

The chart states with lawyerly precision that “106,185 have selected a Marketplace plan,” and that “396,291 Americans were determined or assessed eligible for Medicaid/CHIP.”

Therefore, the chart concludes, “For October 1-November 2, 502,446 (396,261 + 106,185) Americans are positioned to have health coverage in 2014 through the Marketplace, Medicaid and CHIP.” The 502,446 figure is interesting but irrelevant.

The indispensable Avik Roy of Forbessays the real enrollment figure (as of Nov. 8) was a pathetic 45,865 spread out over 19 states. That represents a laughable 0.7 percent –that’s seven-tenths of one percent– of the total first year enrollment goal of 7 million by March 15, 2014. There have been about 5 million cancellations nationwide, according to Roy.

Visiting healthcare.gov or a state exchange website, creating an an online account, applying for coverage, and choosing a government-approved exchange plan, doesn’t count as an enrollment, Roy reminds us. An insured person has to pay the initial premium to have coverage begin and for the action to count as an enrollment.

Unless the government meets its enrollment goal, tricking young, healthy persons into agreeing to heavily subsidize older, sicker persons, the Affordable Care Act cannot succeed, Roy writes. “Low exchange enrollment results in higher premiums for those who do enroll, as the costs of coverage and care are spread out among premium-paying enrollees.”

With all this news of Obamacare-created chaos descending on the nation, now is not the time to be cutting deals with pitiable Democrats.

Although Obamacare may already contain within itself the seeds of its eventual self-destruction, Americans who care about the future of this country have to keep the pressure on. We can’t assume this hideous program will go away on its own.

Conservatives have to keep pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes until they are blue in the face and ready to drop from exhaustion.